This essay explores the reception of ‘nuclear winter’ at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This response is paradigmatic of how scientific predictions can work as stimuli for science diplomacy activities, and either inflate or deflate these forecasts’ public resonance. Those who elaborated the theory in the early 1980s predicted that the environmental consequences of a future nuclear conflict would have been catastrophic; possibly rendering the earth uninhabitable and leading to the extinction of humankind. This prospect was particularly problematic for the Western defence alliance, since it was difficult to reconcile with the tenets of its nuclear posture, especially after the 1979 Dual Track decision, engendering concerns about the environmental catastrophe that the scientists predicted. Thus, NATO officials refrained from commenting on nuclear winter and its implications for the alliance’s deterrence doctrine for some time in an effort to minimize public criticism. Meanwhile, they progressively removed research on nuclear winter from the set of studies and scientific debates sponsored by NATO in the context of its science initiatives. In essence, NATO officials ‘traded’ the promotion of these problematic studies with that of others more amenable to the alliance’s diplomacy ambitions.

本文探讨了北大西洋公约组织（NATO）对“核冬天”的接受。这种回应是科学预测如何刺激科学外交活动的范式，并夸大或缩小了这些预测在公众中的共鸣。那些在1980年代初阐述该理论的人预言，未来核冲突的环境后果将是灾难性的。可能使地球无法居住并导致人类灭绝。对于西方防卫联盟来说，这种前景尤其成问题，因为很难与它的核态势调和，特别是在1979年“双轨”决定之后，引发了对科学家们预言的环境灾难的担忧。因此，北约官员在一段时间内未对核冬天及其对联盟威慑理论的影响发表评论，以尽量减少公众批评。同时，他们逐渐从北约在其科学倡议范围内发起的一系列研究和科学辩论中删除了有关核冬天的研究。本质上，北约官员将促进这些有问题研究的研究与其他更适合联盟外交抱负的研究进行了“交换”。